Entrepreneur and Author Peter A. Thiel spoke at a luncheon sponsored by the Independent Institute on January 27, 2015. He shared insights from his new book Zero to One on how to create true innovations in the world of atomsnot just digits and bitsand how to foster a peaceful, prosperous and freer future marked by globalization in a world of limited resources.

Sr. Fellow Lawrence McQuillan was a guest on the Jason Lewis radio show. He discussed the economics and history of totalitarianism vs capitalism in terms of policies such as higher taxes for corporations, farm subsidies, price and rent controls and endless money supply and how history can show us which of these stifle prosperity. Private property and individualism are the foundations of freedom, argues McQuillan.

Economics and environmentalism are types of modern religions. So says Robert H. Nelson in his analysis of the roots of economics and environmentalism and their mutually antagonistic relations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The present debate raging over global warming exemplifies the clash of these two public theologies.